The author David Foster Wallace wrote an essay complaining about cruising the Caribbean from his usual smug position of "I'm too smart for this, and find it horribly unsettling" with this title. This title, and this attitude, strikes me as appropriate for the bus tour of Stonehenge and Bath that we took today.
Our tour began at 8:30 AM from Victoria Coach Station. After two hours of driving, we arrived at Stonehenge. Stonehenge is in an empty field in the middle of nowhere, and you get to walk around a path around the outside of the stones and hear about how the henge was probably made. There's barrow mounds nearby, and it is impressive to see the giant stones that were hauled for miles, shaped, and erected into massive uprights topped with lintels without the aid of wheels, proper stonemason tools, or draft animals, and the fact that the stones are secured with mortise and tenon joinery is remarkable for a 5,000 year old structure. However, there's maybe an hour and a half's worth of stuff to do including the visitor's center, and you're on a bus tour, so you've only got an hour to do it. This means you get out, wait for a shuttle to the henge, have a good look around with the audio guide, and get back on the bus.
We got to Bath at 1:30 PM, and after 45 minutes to grab a quick lunch, it was time to tour the Roman Baths at 2:15. Unfortunately, we needed to leave Bath at 4:30, and didn't get into the baths until closer to 2:30. The Roman Baths really should take more time than that, and we both felt uncomfortably rushed through the museum. The water that feeds the baths is a natural hot spring that comes from 10,000 year old rainwater being heated by natural geothermal heat, and has been used as such since pre-Roman times (local legend tells of a prince with something like leprosy who discovered the spring by observing his pigs bathing in it and emerging healthier). The museum is built over the ruins of the original Roman bath complex, and contains the best preserved bits, the original sacred spring amd overflow plumbing, a "king's bath" built in the 1700s as a spa for rich people, and the ruins of the Roman temple and bath complex. At the end of the museum, you get to taste the waters of the hot spring, which are warm, and taste like metal and sulfur. Allegedly, this stuff is good for you. By the time we had finished, it was too late for Alecia to visit the Jane Austen center (but not too late for Adam to find a pub), and the local baker had sold out of the local sweet bun things the tour guide mentioned.
After a 2.5 hour bus ride back to London, we went to Covent Garden, because Adam was determined to salvage the day. If Alecia couldn't indulge her sweet tooth with a Sally Lunn bun, she could indulge it with Ladurée macarons. Ladurée is a Parisian pastry shop world renowned for its macarons in exotic flavors like rose petal, violet blackcurrant, and chestnut, and they even make them covered in gold or silver leaf (we each had one of these, and they don't taste any different). After getting 6 more to go, and some dinner, we went back on the Tube to get back to the hostel. Incidentally, this happened to take us past King's Cross, so naturally we stopped by Platform 9-3/4 to take pictures. They take professional photos there, so we bought a copy of the picture we took of both of us to frame in the apartment.
Tomorrow will be Camden Market, West End theater, and either Brick Lane or Hyde Park Winter Wonderland.
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